


icarus returning

by unhappyrefrain



Series: seeing through the eyes of icarus [1]
Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Nightmares, everyday problems arising from the recent acquisition of six very large wings, main quest spoilers?, such as: making coffee; navigating around obstacles; spacial awareness; coping with grief and loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 03:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14228718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhappyrefrain/pseuds/unhappyrefrain
Summary: “I think I like you better that way,” Gran says.“What... do you mean.”“Having dreams. Having feelings. Wishes,” he says. “The other Primarchs were so indecipherable. But you’re like us. I can know you better.”(Sandalphon learns balance, and a few other important things as well.)





	icarus returning

**Author's Note:**

> "ASTER YOU'RE IN THE WRONG FANDOM" but did you really expect anything else?  
> anyway guess who's back. i started playing gbf right when wmtsb ii was wrapping up, and the moment i met sandalphon i just attached myself to him and now you can't pry me off. this is my first gbf fic though so i'm [flailing and hitting my limbs on large boxes marked "CHARACTERIZATIONS" in capital letters]
> 
> i have some feelings about sandalphon's strong emotions, desires, wishes that none of the other primarchs seem to have; i don't think lucilius would have wanted anyone with a chance of even temporarily holding the supreme primarch position to be so emotionally driven. but lucifer didn't know that. he was evolving, too. asking that question. creating an answer.
> 
> there are some small main story spoilers for yggdrasil malice/rose queen arc, and one (1) mention of sandalphon's time and ~~torture~~ """experimentation""" in the lab. 
> 
> (title taken from the echo bazaar/fallen london: "icarus returning / longs for the deep places.")

Your wings hurt.

Or rather, your back hurts, with the strain of your new six wings, the pure white wings that are not and will never be yours. Even when you put them away, the weight of them is still there, bending you back and forcing you to lean forward just to balance out your body. The cadence of your gait has changed. You are not you, but more than you, and yet less than you. You are not purposeless, you are the supreme primarch, and you have lost him.

You think you’ll need some time to get used to these.

The sound of clattering plates from the kitchen. Your cabin is small, but comfortable. It’s right next to the kitchen, for easy access to coffee at any hour. Gran is kind— too kind to you for what you have done. He made sure you had a big enough bed to stretch out your wings.

You wake and find them on your back, as if they had emerged in your sleep. You decide to keep them out for a day, to see how well you fare on your feet.

Immediately you find it a struggle to sit up. Your body tilts forward, then strains back. You heave yourself to the side of the bed and plant your feet solidly on the ground, and force yourself up. Your head spins; you sway unsteadily for a moment until you catch your breath and your balance and walk up and out of the door, still in your oversized T-shirt and flannel pajama pants.

“Ah, Sandalphon!” The girl in blue— _Lyria_ , you think, _I have to call her by her name now_ — pipes up the moment you exit and walk into the kitchen. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough,” you admit. You make a sharp right to the kitchen counter to start making your morning coffee, unaware of the space your wings take up. Immediately you hear the sound of crashing and loud, heavy things hitting wood behind you. Lyria makes a startled little noise. You turn around, not really willing to see what you’ve ruined this time.

“The salt and pepper shakers,” she quickly reassures. “They didn’t break! Don’t worry!” But then your wings hit the counter, and something _else_ falls over, and this time the sound of something shattering. You close your eyes, taking a deep breath in to avoid any overly emotional reactions. _How did Lucifer ever do anything with these?_

Lucifer. Your mind wanders. You think of his head, what was left of him. The way he said your name. In that sweet whisper. What he asked you, asked of you.

Lyria yelps and starts to gather up shards of porcelain from the floor. “Leave it!” you snap, and she recoils. “I mean. Don’t. I can clean it up, I broke it, it’s dangerous.”

She nods. “Um,” she says, quietly. “Do you… want me to help? With your coffee…”

“I can do it.”

You sink to your knees and start to collect the shards with your right hand, depositing them in your left. There isn’t a lot— it was a small enough plate. But you can’t shake the sinking feeling. _Failure,_ you think. _All I ever do is break things._ Your left hand starts to tighten unconsciously, but you don’t notice until you feel warm blood collecting in the creases of your palm.

“Sandalphon?”

Gran’s voice comes from behind you.

“Sandalphon! You’re bleeding—"

“Leave me _alone,_ ” you shout. Unwittingly, your voice echoes, in that ethereal way Lucifer’s always did. The two fall silent, stunned. Afraid, you know, and they have every reason to be. The tightening in your chest gets worse and worse. You find it hard to breathe. “Just… stop. Don’t concern yourself with me. Just leave me be.”

Gran takes a step back. You push yourself up to your feet, trying a couple of times before making it but not without swaying a little, and loosen your grip on the pieces of the saucer before you let them fall, bloodied and tainted, into the trash can, their pure white soiled by your hands. Just like everything else pure and white you have ever touched.

“I’m... I’m going back to bed,” you manage, before you turn and wobble your way back to your room and close the door behind you, careful not to shut it on your wings.

 

* * *

 

You dream that you are sitting at a glass-top tea table, the base all delicate twists in wrought iron, in the shaded garden you knew so well. There is a cup of coffee in front of you; you stare down into it. You can feel his presence across from you, there on the other side of the table, and you avoid looking directly at him, for fear of blinding yourself.

You keep your eyes closed as you take your first sip of the coffee. It’s a little cool. But the taste is... perfect. Just as you remember, the way he makes it just for you, for the two of you. You let the acidity settle first in your mouth, then the sweet undertones of caramel, taking a breath in through your nose to savor each unfolding of the complex taste. It reveals its sweetness, its notes of honeysuckle and orange blossom, and leaves you with the smooth, comforting aftertaste of something— something that has been burned. Something that has fallen in love with the light.

“Sandalphon? How is it?”

You look up, instinctively, to answer him. The cup is still in your hand. And then it is shattering against the slate below you.

His head is gone.

You wake, gasping, with the taste of coffee and blood in your mouth.

 

* * *

 

Always nightmares like this. There are lines of salt dried onto your cheeks. Your hands are shaking as you pull yourself up to a sitting position, bring the covers further over you. You look down into your lap. The image stays with you, reflected in the white sheets. Anything that has light, he lingers in it.

 _Ah_ , you think, when your back presses against the wooden headboard. _My wings are gone._

Well, it’s better like this, anyway. You can make coffee without tearing apart the kitchen, now. How long have you slept? Your cabin has no windows, as does much of the lower floor, but you don’t really mind. Coffee is fine at any hour. In fact, maybe it’s better at night, to keep you from sleeping, to allow no possibility of nightmares.

You feel much lighter when you stand up, this time. Nothing weighing you down save your own regret. You might as well get dressed. There are sunsets to watch— the only time you can look at the sun without burning your eyes, without being reminded of the white light. _Ah._ You’re a little dizzy— stood up too fast. You fall back into the bed with a sigh.

You’ve softened up, a little. Ever since Gran and the others dragged you out to that little coffee plantation in search of the same taste you remember from two thousand years ago, you’ve grown a little more accustomed to them. Gran’s constant worrying and insistence on helping whenever things go even slightly awry. Lyria’s unwavering positivity, the sound of her small bare feet against the wooden deck. Vyrn is... well, Vyrn is Vyrn. The crimson dragon of legend is really just a rambunctious lizard, and somehow you feel safer for it.

It doesn’t surprise you, then, when Gran knocks on your door while you’re still lying face down across the bed, exhausted and half-dressed, and then decides to come in anyway when he doesn’t hear your answer (an annoyed mumble into the duvet.) You hear the door open and bury your face further down into the mattress.

“Sandalphon? Uh, it’s six o’clock, dinner is soon and we...” He trails off, and you push yourself up from the bed and give him a sleepy glare.

“I was getting dressed. Do you know how to knock?”

“Ah,” Gran says, caught off-guard by the lack of venom in your fanged words. “Uh, forgive me for saying so, but you don’t _look_ like you’re getting dressed.”

“I was dizzy,” you admit. “Having a physical form is… undesirable. Don’t _you_ ever get tired of having a body?”

Gran seems to take this as an invitation to a conversation, which is exactly the opposite of how you wanted this to go. He sits down on the bed next to you. You don’t really know how to respond.

“Yeah, I guess. Having to eat and sleep is kind of annoying when there’s so much else I could be doing,” he says, and you’re surprised by the understanding in his words, the empathy. You don’t even have the courage to ask why he’s sitting on your bed. “But having a body can be cool, too. It lets you interact with people, and objects in the physical world.”

“I could interact with the world just fine without it,” you snap.

“But we wouldn’t know it was you. And you wouldn’t make us coffee.”

“You assume I would just make you—"

You stop yourself right there, noticing the wry smirk on Gran’s face. You _have_ been making coffee for the crew, every single morning since then. But you’re not going to allow him the satisfaction of telling you you’re wrong.

“Anyway,” you say, quickly diverting. “I was going to get up and dress, and possibly make coffee if you all are so desperate, but then you came in. Leave.”

“You were screaming.”

Your body freezes. The coldness in the pit of your stomach, in your wrists and your fingertips, sets back in.

“I was... what? No,” you try to say, but it comes out as more of an exhausted, cracking whisper. You try again, stabilizing your voice. “That’s nonsense.”

“I didn’t hear it. Lyria did.”

 _Ah_.

You remember Lyria telling you the story of Yggdrasil, how the Empire afflicted her with Malice. Your heart constricted as she told you everything— how she screamed in agony, in a soundless voice that was not heard but felt across the forest. (You know that scream, that pain. You have lived it yourself, become the mouth of it.) But Lyria heard it, could actually _hear_ it, she had said, and it was the most heartwrenching cry she could remember. You know she can sense the emotions of Primals— a memory comes back to you unbidden.

 

_“It feels like... he wants to be respected. He wants to be loved and comforted. There’s something else too... He wants to be forgiven—"_

 

And oh, how that had shaken you.

You are quickly reminded of how vulnerable you actually are, around her.

“And she just... told you to come see me? Why didn’t she just keep quiet? Or come here herself?” you question him. Gran waves his hands in front of him, frantically.

“I don’t know, I don’t know! She just told me, _please check on him for me, only you know the right words to say,_ and then she went back to her room and she was crying and shaking. What _happened_?”

What _did_ happen? You don’t remember screaming even in the nightmare— just silence, struck dumb with horror and guilt and grief and fear. But those emotions can be louder,  _are_ louder than any voice. Your heart very well may have been screaming.

You tell the truth. Not the whole truth, but still, a truth.

“A nightmare,” you say, still looking at your hands in your lap. They’re not shaking anymore, but if you think about it too much, they will. Gran is silent, but you know he’s looking at you. You can feel his gaze on you; soft, curious, kind. “There. Are you satisfied? Now go, I need to get up.”

He doesn’t leave. He sits there, as if lost in thought. You are prepared to stand up and drag him out the door if you have to, but then—

“I didn’t know Archangels could dream,” he murmurs, almost to himself. You feel the core of you shake.

“We weren’t supposed to. Lucifer never did. Nor did the others, I’m sure. But I... Even I’m not sure why I do.”

 

 _I created him to your specifications,_ he had said to that cursed Astral, but you have always wondered: did he really? What did he add to you that the others could so conveniently live without? Did he give you a heart like a mortal’s, these horrible surging emotions, the craving to love and be loved? Why did he want you to feel?

_Did he learn of love? Did he want to understand it?_

_Did he want to be loved by someone?_

_By me?_

 

“I think I like you better that way,” Gran says.

“What... do you mean.”

“Having dreams. Having feelings. Wishes,” he says. “The other Primarchs were so indecipherable. But you’re like us. I can know you better.”

The core of you lets out a sob you didn’t know you were holding in. Soundless, it reverberates through the ship, seeping between the wooden planks, emerging in swirls up through the deck, the dust of it lost to the wind.

You don’t speak. You can’t speak. Something is frozen in your throat. A thought.

_The Astral didn’t tell Lucifer what role to shape me around. He did it himself, from a blank canvas, with no blueprint. With his hands, and his thoughts..._

_There was a wish there. A question. He wanted to understand._

 

_Maybe I was created for him to love._

_Maybe I was born to be loved._

 

A sudden burst of movement, of matter, of light. Gran is so startled he falls off the bed. Your wings burst from your back, expand, unfold. Feathers scatter. There is no pain— they break through your flesh as if there is no flesh, manifest from your core and stretch out until they can go no further. Like they’re trying to touch the world, brush the tips of their feathers over as much as they can. A first experience. A glimpse of innocence. A wish.

The light fades. You blink, and a delicate flutter travels down each pair of wings. Gran looks up at you from the floor, his expression somewhere between awe and pride.

“Lyria was right,” you tell him, with no further elaborations. He grins. “Go. I’ll be out in a moment.”

He’s on his way to the door as you struggle upwards, bracing yourself against the weight, determined to make it work this time— and then, abruptly, as if he had never turned away, a hand pulls you forward and up onto your feet.

It’s Gran’s, and yet, it’s not quite his. You can sense it, a familiar touch. A faint presence, the glimpse of a white feather in the corner of your eye, yours and not yours.

 

_Was I right, Lucifer? Did I guess correctly?_

_I’m sorry that it took me so long._

 

Then, just as quietly as it came, it is gone.

The door closes. You set to putting on something passable for clothing. Your wings phase in and out of the fabric.

Maybe his pose doesn’t suit you. You liked it; it made you feel powerful, like he was there behind you, resonating in you. But keeping your wings outstretched, being glorious all the time... it gets in the way. You tuck your wings in as close to your back as you can. They fold, obediently, like a delicate pair of hands. As if they know that they do not comprise you, should not overshadow the person you are. The person born to be loved.

The balance is better, like this. The weight, the grief is still there. It will always be there. But you can stand again. You can move.

And so you move.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> expect more sandalphon/lucisan content in the near future. i want to write a followup to this.
> 
> also you have to admit the image of a sleepy sandalphon in a plain oversized t-shirt and flannel pajama pants is so fucking cute


End file.
